Ford Everest: Product Experience Strategy

Brief

Define a Product Experience Strategy that can be executed through a commonised mechanical platform and regional tailoring.

Ford Motor Company

Year

Role

Team

2017-2019

Senior Experience Designer

User Experience
Vehicle Engineering

Approach

Leverage and synthesize existing insights workstreams and organisations to deeply understand regional contexts and customer needs.
Create a north star provocation to unite the cross functional product development team towards a single unified vision: Design studio, product marketing, engineering
Define, rationalise and champion bespoke design and technology for the product and platform to other vehicle lines to amortise costs.

Background

The current product has diverse ‘personality’ between different regions:

A lifestyle passport 
in developed countries

A robust family mover 
in developing countries

This has led to confusion within the business and the marketplace – the challenge has always been to serve global markets with a single product.

A product portfolio segmentation plan is needed for us to continue to serve these two divergent groups within a single product by strengthening the product’s reputation and volumes in its existing markets.

Ethnography: City Selection

We chose several top selling cities in three countries to understand what brand/product reputation we can strengthen along with understanding how to conquest competitor sales.

I conducted 25 of 32 interviews in 4 countries within a span of 5 weeks.

Ethnography: Major Findings

We found that there were major themes that threaded our major markets together.
However there were some major product personality differences between the different regions due to socio-economic customer attributes and availability of outdoor adventure opportunities.

“Self driven adventures is a passport to the outdoors; to see places no other human has seen before”

“Seek thrills away from the city; to reconnect, upskill and seek tribes of like minded people.”

“A third room – for my family to jump between my air conditioned home, to the air conditioned mall”

“Strength and capability to wade through broken roads and to signal to others that we are a class not to be meddled with”

“I’m an active parent, of an active family – and this is my active car”

“A comfortable, capable, reliable vehicle lets me do anything and gets me out of anything”

Consumer Trends

We use global macro trends alongside current insights to see into the future – to forecast user expectations and product requirements in the coming decade.

(Fun fact: Ford has it’s own Futurist group as part of it’s intelligence & insights team)

How automotive is different to other consumer categories?

Compared to FMCG and tech/mobile tech,
we dive into longer macro trends due to automotive’s unique clockspeed.

_{4 year “concept to launch” product development process}“Our products need to intersect trends in 4 years time”

_{3-5 year ownership period:}
“Our products needs to adapt to changing lifestyles”

_{2nd most expensive purchase after the family home}
“Our customers don’t want to make the wrong decision - 
they are well researched, risk adverse but ultimately emotionally invested and irrational”

_{4 year model cycle, 8 year platform}
“Our platform remain relevant 9 years from the first iteration”

Consumer
Evolution of exclusivity

Transcending material goods – Increasing spend on lifestyle goods, especially ones that grant access to exclusive experiences

Consumer
Rise of engagement to nature

Increasing recognition of getting into nature will increase allure to explore the natural world

Government Policy
Improved roads

Increasing government spending on road infrastructure will allow sedans to explore where only 4WD SUVs were able to roam.

Socioeconomic trend
Growing middle class

Increasing disposable income tempts adults into lavish lifestyle spends – SUVs that can explore nature becomes an exclusive and exciting niche .

Product Experience Strategy

Synthesising all the consumer research and competitive intelligence, we formed a product ‘strategy’ that informs

Hardware

Mechanical vehicle attributes
Vehicle accessory hardpoints
Mechanical design execution

Software

Physical UI/UX
Onscreen UI/UX
Product specific applications

Services

Aftermarket accessory themes
Marketing campaigns
3rd party partnerships

To avoid professional confidentiality conflicts, this work has been explicitly recreated and redesigned without any confidential IP and is of representative process but non-representative outcomes
As of Q1 2022, the target vehicle program is still being developed

2×2 Matrix

2×2 matrix shows contrast of product bandwidth.

Synthesizing our research, I chose the following:

_Tension
“My family comes first
… but I don’t want to drive a minivan”

_Tension
“Driving an off-road vehicle is excessively compromised
running daily errands”

Experience
One Liner
The single sentence that defines
the product’s goal.

Jobs To Be Done
Jobs to be Done framework defines what customers aspirational use cases.
The project has 4 particular Jobs with an overarching 5th Job to highlight that the integration of all 4 Jobs are as critical success to as any single ‘extreme’ Job.